Chapter 3: Surviving

Ding!

Achievement: You are the second person to kill a monster in almost complete darkness.

 Reward: The Art of Necromancy or Magnetism

*Rewards are greater due to the monster being more than twice your level*

Because I was the second person to kill a monster in almost complete darkness, I received an achievement. For a brief moment I wondered who the first person was. He would have to be pretty strong since I struggled, even with the use of magic. I hadn’t been down here that long but I was sure that more than one person should have killed a monster, even if it was in almost complete darkness. I’m pretty sure that its nighttime in other parts of the world. But maybe the monsters up top were just too strong. The level 4 giant rat that I fought was challenging in itself. I could hardly imagine something that was even twice its level. But enough about that, it was time to choose my reward.

My choices included necromancy or magnetism. These were some decent rewards that I was getting. I wondered what choices the first person got. Magnetism would be good since I saw how well Magneto used his powers in the X-men. The only problem with picking it was that there was barely any metal around me. My other choice was necromancy. It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t leaning towards that one already. Who didn’t want to be an evil mage that summoned skeletons to do their dirty work? But on a serious note if someone close to me died, I might be able to bring them back to life. It might not work but it was a risk I was willing to take. After a few seconds of going over the pros and cons once more I made my choice.  

“Necromancy”

The moment I uttered that word a book came floating down towards me. What the hell? Where had this book come from? I looked around carefully in order to satiate my curiosity. Unfortunately no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t see anything except for moss or darkness. Looking at the book in my hands, I glanced at the title to see what information it contained. On the front cover of the book stood the words The Art of Necromancy in bold black letters. The title made it pretty clear what this book was about. I flipped the book around to see if there was anything else on the back. Sadly the back was blank which meant I had to read the book in order to see the contents it held. But what did I expect, a necromancy skill to just conveniently appear? Holding the book tightly in my hands I headed back to the place where the ladder was.

After walking for a few minutes I arrived at the ladder. Sitting down beneath the dim lightbulb, I began to read. Time went by quickly as I grew more and more interested in the art of necromancy. When twenty minutes had gone by I forced myself to look away from the book. I needed to review the things I learned before I continued.

Although I said it was a book, it was more like a journal. The journey depicted how to raise dead creatures and use them to follow your bidding. The necromancer who wrote this made it clear that this was a very dangerous process and to follow every step that he made. One wrong step and you might accidently summon something that was never meant to see the light of day. I could only start changing some steps when I was adept at raising the dead. Even though I had been reading the journal for twenty minutes, I wasn’t even close to done. But from the pages I read I learned how to reanimate the dead. Something that I was eager to try.

I headed off into the darkness to grab the carcass of the rat that I had killed. I needed a subject and there were no other dead things around. Ten minutes later I stood in front of the carcass of the rat with the journal in my hand. It was time to bring the giant rat back to life.

There were many different symbols and rituals for summoning different beasts. Right now I was choosing the most basic one since I had no idea what I was doing. Dipping some moss in the blood of the giant rat I began painting strange and exotic symbols around it. The symbol I was creating now was for giant rodents. I didn’t know if the necromancer had giant rats in mind when he made this symbol but it would have to work. After a few minutes of painting and reading the book for details I was done with the first part of the ritual. Before moving on I made sure all of the lines and dashes I made were correct. I didn’t want to screw up on my first reanimation.

Once I was done checking I began to chant the words that were in the journal. None of the words were in English so I had no idea what they meant. Maybe when I was finished with the book would I know what they meant. Until then I would just have to read the chant word for word. Once I was done chanting I placed my hand on the carcass and pumped some of my mana into it. I did this by gathering the mana that was in my body and pushing it towards the rat. Once a sufficient portion of my mana was devoured I stood back to watch the results of my labor.

Silence ran throughout the sewers as I waited for the rat to come back to life. After a minute passed I began to worry. Was I doing this right? I glanced back at the journal in order to make sure I accomplished every step I was meant to do. Corpse, check. Necromancy symbol, check. Chant, check. Put mana into the corpse, check. I hadn’t missed anything so I didn’t understand why the rat wasn’t moving. But right before I was about to give up and try it one a different corpse, the carcass of the rat moved.

I waited in silent anticipation as the giant rat struggled to stand. No way, I could hardly believe this was happening. The rat I had just killed was moving once more, all thanks to me. Before I could examine it any further my vision was blocked by a blue box.  

Due to you reanimating a corpse, a special skill has been gained.

Ding!

NecromancySkill Type: ActiveSkill Rank: RareSkill Level: 1Exp: 10%Effect: Allows the user to reanimate dead corpses. The stronger the skill, the longer the reanimated corpse can stay alive and the stronger it will be. Certain rituals will change the corpses characteristics.

Ding!

New Title Gained! Undead Prophet

Description: You are the first person in the world to create an undead. Due to this most undead see you in a new light. You are no longer just some passerby to them, you are now a prophet.

Effects: Undead won't attack you on sight and see you as one of their own. You now have more positive feelings such as sympathy towards the undead. All undead language is now understandable. Evolution towards undead is now possible. Due to an undead aura surrounding you, users of light will become more hostile towards you while users of the dark will become friendlier.

Thanks to my reanimated corpse I gained the skill necromancy. From what I read it seemed that it would help me with my endeavor of creating undead. If I leveled the skill high enough I might not even need to do the rituals and chants. But in order to do this I would need to level up the skill and become stronger. So I was a long way away from reanimating corpses without rituals.

Moving away the necromancy box by flicking my eyes, I looked at my new title. It seems that I was the first person to create an undead. It made sense because with my necromancy journal I would have been unable to reanimate the rat. But thanks to the journal I was now an undead prophet. I would be forever thankful to the necromancer who made this journal. Without him it would’ve been much harder for me to get strong quickly. I would now be able to fight my enemies two on one with an undead by my side. This made my death less likely to happen. The only thing I needed to be wary of was users of light. It seemed that I had some type of undead aura that would set me apart from other people. Thankfully I wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that until I got out of this dungeon.

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After I closed all of the blue boxes I looked at my undead rat to see how it was doing. However the only thing that met my eyes was a white pile of dust. Was that my rat? What had happened to it?  I looked inside my journal to see what had happened. It turned out that my undead rat had died once more due to the lack of mana inside of it. Since I hadn’t put a lot of mana into it, it had died relatively quickly. The only reason it had survived this long was because of the ritual I had used to summon it. Grabbing a bit of the white dust in my hand I examined it.

Bone Dust

Description: Crumbled remains of different bones.

Effect: Alchemy Ingredient

Hmm, this was interesting. Whenever I brought something back to life, it would become bone dust when it died again. Or at least it would if it has bones in its body. The only monster I had fought had been a giant rat and I was sure there were other monsters that didn’t have bones. I was about to gather the bone dust to use later when I realized I had a problem. How was I supposed to store this? Looking off into the distance I began to think.

Quite a few ideas ran throughout my head but none of them useful. If I left it here the wind would just blow it away. That would be a waste and I was sure that I would use it later. I could put it in my shoe however that would leave me with one shoe. I didn’t want to put my bare foot on this filthy ground even with a sock on. The only idea that really stuck out to me was storing it on my jacket. However if I did this I would need to leave my jacket by the ladder. The reason for this was because most of it would fall out while I was walking. With a firm resolve I made my decision. Even though I would be cold it would be worth it in the long run until I found a better solution.

Taking my jacket off slowly I began the process of moving the bone dust on the ground into my hood. Once this was done I closed my hood and folded my jacket on top of it. I then placed this folded bundle by the ladder. Once I figured out how to do alchemy I would be able to use my jacket again. Until then I would just have to deal with the cold wind that occasionally blew through the sewers. After I finished placing my jacket I moved under the lightbulb so I could begin meditating. I had lost quite a bit of mana reanimating the giant rat and I wanted my mana refilled before I ventured out again. Sitting on the cold ground I closed my eyes and gathered the mana around me.

As I meditated on the cool ground, I began to think. I needed a place to sleep at night and the place I’m currently at wouldn’t work. The reason for this is because if I have my back facing the ladder, I can see three pathways. One to my left, another to the right, and finally the one in front of me.  I already knew that the pathway on the left was filled with rats but I didn’t know about the other ones. For all I knew they could have monsters with level incomparably high compared to mine. I didn’t want to die foolishly just because I wanted some sleep. I thought of what to do until I was done meditating.

Twenty minutes later and my mana bar was completely filled. The reason it took me less time than last time was because I still had a decent bit of mana left. I also noticed that my ankle had stopped bleeding from the nip the rat gave me. It didn’t even throb when I moved it. Although it didn’t hurt I hoped I didn’t get some disease from the bite the rat gave me. That would suck since there were no doctors down here and I couldn’t afford to get sick.

Since I was quite comfortable where I sat, I decided to make myself a list of goals to accomplish. The first one was getting a solid weapon. My wind blade didn’t count since I would lose it if I ran out of mana. I needed some type of weapon like an axe or a spear. Maybe if I killed more rats they would drop a weapon as loot? Who knew? I would need to kill some in order to test my hypothesis.

My next goal was to train the skills I had that were low leveled. I wanted to train my necromancy so I could fight with the rats I reanimated. This would make the upcoming fights way easier. The third goal was doing some alchemy. I had no idea how to do it so I put that as one of the last things to do. My fourth goal was finding my phone. It was the reason I was down here after all. My other goals included things such as finishing my necromancy journal and creating new skills. My final goal was finding or creating a new base. I had no idea how I was going to do that but I still put it as one of my goals.

The first goal that I decided to do was training my skills and creating them. As of right now I had a total of four skills. These skills were mana affinity, meditation, wind blade, and necromancy. I would train my meditation skill every time I ran out of mana so I could take that off the list. My mana affinity’s level would rise when I trained my mana related skills so I didn’t have to worry about that. This left me with wind blade and necromancy. I would be able to train both of these skills by fighting giant rats. Once I killed a rat with my wind blade, I could reanimate it using my necromancy skill. Two birds with one stone.

Now that my training schedule was made, I decided to start creating another magic skill. Wind blade was good and all but I wanted a variety of attacks. Normally I would just make another wind spell but I wanted to try earth magic next. The reason for this was because I would be able to make a container that I could place items in such as my bone dust.

Before I began training I looked for a patch of earth that I could use. Air was the easiest to do since it was all around me. If I touched the element I was trying to create the spell from, it made things a whole lot easier. Once I found a path of earth I made a wind blade surround my hand. Once my hand was covered in wind I shoved it into the ground. Canceling my spell I kept my hand still as dirt began to cover it. Closing my eyes I began to focus my mind on my hand that was in the earth.

Sensing the mana around in the air, I began to gather it towards my hand. The mana was still hard to gather, but it was easier compared to when I was trying to create a wind blade. It seemed that the more I practiced, the better I got. Time passed by as I concentrated on gathering the mana towards my head. The challenge wasn’t gathering the mana, it was how long it took. Everything would be fine as long as I persevered.

Fifteen minutes later I had finally gathered a sufficient amount of mana. Now that the mana was gathered I had to figure out what I was going to do with it. I didn’t want to form it in the shape of a sword since I already had my wind blade. I thought on it for a few minutes before I decided on an earth spike. I could surprise my enemies by an attack from below. Who would expect an attack like that?

Feeling the earth around me, I began to combine it with the mana. Sweat began to drip down my face as I forced the mana and the earth to combine. Time passed by as more and more of the particles combined. It was a little bit easier than last time since I knew the basics of what to do. Ten minutes later and the earth surrounding my hand had successfully combined with the mana. Once I finished I pushed the combined particles away from my hand with all my might and imagined an earthen spike. Suddenly a few feet in front of me, a spike exploded from the ground. The moment it did a grin spread across my face. I finally had another attack to use. Before I could examine my spike, a blue box appeared in front of me.